Tedious or – Worse – Annoying Wines

This week I was planning a small yet, apparently, controversial expansion to the vin d’emotion scale to include the missing bottom end, meaning the wines I don’t enjoy, or that are simply bad.

This turned out to be highly charged. Calling a wine awful is clearly too much for delicate French sensibilities, although the same people often would use even stronger language to describe the same wines when tete-a-tete.

Call it French politeness; nobility in a sense. Whatever it is, I sort of applaud any kind of nobility in today’s world, so I will restrain the fighting ‘Hog.

I therefore need to be creative to succeed in eliminating harsh language and negativity, and yet still be clear in my mission to recommend emotional wines (or even remotely enjoyable ones) while weeding out those that provide little to no joy or pleasure.

Please note: These calls are based on my individual taste, which may or may not be the same as yours.

Tedious

The first new classification will be tedious wines. Plainly and simply, these are wines that evoke little emotion either way – pleasure or displeasure. In other words: indifference. They can be drunk with food, and friends, without causing unpleasantness any kind. Boring would also work, but tedious is my kind of language.

Annoying

I drink and taste wines to get joy and pleasure, and fortunately, quite a few do provide this (to a greater or lesser degree). Some are minimally joyful, others are truly emotional.

When a wine doesn’t give any joy or pleasure, and has little possibility of ever doing so, then it starts to get annoying: annoying to taste, annoying that the bottle is still half full, just … annoying.

I am not saying the wine is bad, flawed, or poor, just that it provokes no positive reaction of any kind.

If it’s bothersome, irritating, or … annoying, then it is certainly not recommended, and you should look elsewhere.

Wines that are worse than annoying will not be mentioned.

See the full rating scale below, with tedious and annoying added.